“The Absurd is not
in man… nor in the world, but in their presence together. For the moment it is
the only bond uniting them.”
–Albert
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
“That’s life. Whichever way you turn, fate
sticks out a foot to trip you”
–Al
Roberts, Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer,
1945)
Bunny Lebowski:
Ulli doesn’t care about anything. He’s a nihilist.
The Dude: Ah. Must
be exhausting
–
The Big Lebowski (Joel and Ethan
Coen, 1998)
Joel and Ethan Coen, the
double-brained, quadruple-handed creative entity behind some of the most boldly
original films to come out of the post-New-Hollywood generation, have created
and maintained a unique, unmistakable signature style, a willful blend of
darkness, humor, and sophistication. The sixteen movies the brothers have
written, directed, and produced to date mostly limit themselves to the confines
of two recognizable registers, film noir and comedy. Prior to the darkly
comedic unraveling of noir themes, characters, and motifs in such postmodern
works as Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction
(1994), the Coens were already making (self-)consciously comic use of noir
plots and stylistic techniques through their characteristic mix of irony,
poetry, and drama. Commentators, noting the pair’s cold, cynical treatment of
characters and their fiercely, hyperconsciously intertextual play on films
past, have sometimes described the Coens’ work as emptied out stylization or as
unnecessarily grim, pessimistic, and even amoral. Using Blood Simple
(1984), the filmmakers’ first feature effort, I will argue that far from
social, moral, and political apathy, what emerges in the films of the Coen
brothers is a consistent, if occasionally nihilistic, philosophy of human
experience. The directors’ work manages to repurpose and revitalize conventions
of past cultural forms in a way that is meaningful to the present moment.
Perhaps even more importantly, their films amount to a deeper investigation of
the human condition that is as serious and engaged as it is humorously macabre.
